Hear Floridians Talk About Their Desegregation Experiences

Mamie Pinder holds a photograph of herself as a young teaching student. Pinder, a retired Miami-Dade school teacher, began teaching in 1963, the year the school district began merging black and white students bodies and faculty.

A recent ProPublica investigation found at least 300 school districts that are still under court-ordered desegregation. Eleven of those districts are in Florida.

Even though Miami-Dade County had those desegregation orders lifted relatively recently in 2001, it was an early leader in desegregation, putting black and white children and black and white teachers in the same schools.

StateImpact Florida collected memories from some of those students and teachers.

Note to listeners: this story contains strong language.

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Remembering early desegregation in South Florida.

David Smiley and Emily Michot of the Miami Herald contributed to this story. Some of these stories came to us from the Public Insight Network, an online community of people who have agreed to share their opinions with The Miami Herald and WLRN. Become a news source for WLRN by going to WLRN.org/Insight.

My maternal grandparents, Sam D. and Ida Ellen Roberts Johnson, were born in Harbour Island, Bahamas. It is believed that their foreparents were among the millions of black slaves forced from West Africa and sold in the West Indies.